Friday, 10 October 2014

Development Roadmap: Threat to India’s Environment and Wildlife

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The development roadmap of present
government as indicated through their recent

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Photo: Survival International

economic policies would sharply
pose a threat to India’s marginalized communities, green environment and precious
wildlife. Thus with the dilution of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 by the
Ministry of Environment and Forest to grant forest clearances for facilitating
development projects is a step towards this. The most sensitive areas around
tiger reservation, national parks and sanctuaries now would be under the grab
of project developers as they have been de-linked from wildlife assessment
impacts.

Such kind of policy decision would
necessarily help the developers to go ahead with the linear projects of
irrigation, canals, highways and power lines, but by massive destruction of
India’s rich forest areas and its wildlife. Though providing funds for
compensatory afforestation is mandatory, but fair utilization of this fund
would be a challenge.

The present government has also done
away with the need for consent of tribals for forest and mine openings in their
traditional lands, which clearly violates their rights. The state government
can no longer put any additional conditions to protect forest and biodiversity
for those projects which have been cleared from the Centre.

All these steps are taken with a
justification that India need development, and all its citizens must enjoy the
fruits of it. But such a policy roadmap to modernize India clearly in
contradiction with the issue of the rights of tribals over their forest land,
which would also be at the cost of precious environment and wildlife. This
development policy is unsustainable and undemocratic. Can this development ensure
the well being of the last and the least in the country or is it a path towards
more inequity in the economy?